Black jobseekers are Anglicising their names in order to get interviews during the recession, according to a new report.
First published: 4th December 2009, Operation Black Vote
The New York Times carried a feature showing that African-Americans – whose African identity has already been stripped away through enslavement – are altering their names in a bid to get back into employment. Could this be the case in Britain?
The American paper highlights the case of Barry Jabbar Sykes, who goes by Barry J. Sykes in his job quest, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life.
Others, like Johnny R. Williams (pictured) have changed their CV to erase black-specific activities or memberships. Williams struck out his membership of the African-American Business Students Association.
So are black jobseekers compromising themselves by changing their names or expunging colour from their resume, or are they simply doing what is necessary in tough times?
I doubt this situation is unique to the United States. I reported that the head of the UK government’s Ethnic Minority Employment Taskforce, Iqbal Wahhab, went public with his anger at Britain’s failure to tackle the “ethnic penalty” in the jobs market.
A month later a senior civil servant warned that the UK was in danger of losing a generation of black talent during the recession.
With a whole shelf full of reports on the persistent nature of race discrimination in employment, it would not be surprising if black communities adopted job seeking tactics to try and overcome the bias of employers.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
Well i changed my name – i Africanized my name almost twenty years ago and that had no effect on my jobs prospects as a Black Briton – discriminated and subject to the same racism in twenty five years in and out of the jobs market. Changing your name back to “John Smith” will not make a blind bit of difference for there are other forms of employer based discrimination such as by post code – applications from areas where Black communities are perceived as resident such as N15 (Tottenham) are routinely discarded before a first reading.